


One Had a Lovely Face

by sloppy



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series, Wilderness School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 06:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppy/pseuds/sloppy
Summary: School was an ouroboros of dispassionate children and lenient instructors that Piper only hated because it gave her too much freedom to do whatever she wanted. She kicked the heel of her boot against the side of the dumpster she’d been leaning on, rolled a demolished lollipop stick between her teeth, and waited for the kid digging through trash to resurface for air.





	One Had a Lovely Face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pipermclean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipermclean/gifts).



> Lily is the sweetest. This is just a small, light thing to commemorate my roots. Title is from [this really appropriate Yeats poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/memory-3/)!

School was an ouroboros of dispassionate children and lenient instructors that Piper only hated because it gave her too much freedom to do whatever she wanted. She kicked the heel of her boot against the side of the dumpster she’d been leaning on, rolled a demolished lollipop stick between her teeth, and waited for the kid digging through trash to resurface for air.

“Got it!” cried the kid, chucking a small circuitboard Piper caught singlehandedly. Some of the motors stuck out and pricked her palm when she held too hard. Then the boy pulled himself out, unbothered by how hot the metal must have been after being under the desert sun all morning.

Leo Valdez had two months over Piper for Wilderness residency. The last fosters he ditched had lived in Reno, and he’d made it all the way to Vegas before his social worker swooped down on him. He still liked to talk about the city like he actually was in love with it, all the food and flashing skin and lights that lit the skyline as if the stars themselves had come down to give their blessing. He wasn’t a bad liar, but she was Piper McLean.

“Does it still work?”

“Never did,” Leo replied. He wiped his hands on the same black cotton tee he’d worn yesterday. “Didn’t have time to install the switch before the dumbass tossed it. Yeesh. I’m never getting this out.” There was a discolored stain on his right sleeve that wouldn’t rub off.

“Just tell Happy what happened. She’ll give you an extension,” Piper said, poking some of the wires. “She gives extensions _for_ extensions.”

“Pass. Miss Jones hates me.”

“Happy hates nobody,” she scoffed. “That’s why they call her Happy.” 

“Guess my name’s Nobody, because she hates _me_.”

Leo grabbed the circuitboard from her grasp, and even contact as quick as that had her reeling. “Do you have a fever?” she asked. His fingers had burned.

“Huh? No.” Leo snatched his backpack set nearby her feet, shoved in the circuitboard, and threw it over his shoulder. He turned to her, brows furrowed in thought. “Wait, are you skipping?”

“Free period,” she lied. Then she thought better of it. “I mean, technically my whole day’s a free period. I didn’t go to homeroom.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

Piper watched him fiddle with his bag’s compression straps. She hadn’t known Leo for very long, only since the week before when they’d been put in the same detention block after Coach Hedge cited them both for lack of participation. He made her laugh, and she supposed he was better than the other knuckleheads in their grade who kept bothering her in ways she abhorred being bothered. As the days went by, however, Piper realized her efforts in upholding companionship had become one-sided. Today, she had spotted him going down the dormitory stairwell leading to the back alley, and they hung around in silence for fifteen minutes before she heard what Dylan had done.

Throwing the lollipop stick into the dumpster, Piper said, “I’m hungry. Let’s go get lunch.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Neither do I. But you know what they say: necessity breeds invention, or whatever the hell.” The corner of his lips quirked up at that. “I was thinking we could rob somebody.”

 

* * *

 

They end up not executing any crimes, minor or major. Piper simply asked the worker behind the counter if they had some extra fries and a Big Mac to spare and that was that. She even got a couple shakes from the deal for no real reason. Leo seemed to know not to bite the hand that fed him, so he ate the burger without the common scrutiny that often came with her little talent. That endeared him to Piper, and she gave him the rest of her share of fries when he killed all of his.

“So Tristan McLean is really your dad?”

She sucked the McFlurry through the straw-spoon, savoring the cold. “Yup.”

“That’s crazy! He’s, like, won Oscars!”

“Just one,” Piper corrected. The shake had melted to liquid, but she didn’t mind. “Keeps it above his bathroom toilet.”

Food had softened him, and Leo was now in higher spirits than he was before. He tended to have more ups than downs, and Piper could barely keep up.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Leo scooped up some more fries and drowned them in ketchup. “And what about you?”

“I don’t have an Oscar.”

He snorted. “I mean, why are you even here? Your pops can’t iron out your record or pay off anybody? I’d get out of here ASAP if I were you. Our school is a dump.”

“I’ve noticed,” deadpanned Piper. “I don’t know. If I wasn’t here, I’d probably still be at some other boarding school across the country, skipping classes with a weird boy and psychoanalyzing my neglected father-daughter relationship.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Leo rose an eyebrow. “I’m not qualified for psychoanalyses. I don’t think I’m even qualified for regular analyses.”

“Then what am I even here for?” she teased. 

A grin spread unevenly on his mouth. “My flaming hot bod? My dashing good looks? You look like you could use some tips.”

“You just said you weren’t qualified for analyses!”

“It’s not an analysis, it’s advice! When I’m done with you, you’d win pageants just by entering your name. Beauty queen to end all beauty queens! That’s just how generous I am.”

Piper was not that kind of girl, but inexplicably, she thought, _Are we flirting right now?_ Leo wasn’t unpleasant to look at, even if his ears were a little wide and eyes were a bit too sharp. She smiled whenever he did, contagious. He was on her wavelength. But Piper thought she knew what he was like when he was interested in a girl; he always bordered on the obvious. This right now wasn’t obvious.

She cut to the chase. “Do you like me or not, Leo?”

Leo froze mid-bite, dropping a fry. “Uh. Say what?”

Rolling her eyes, Piper explained, swirling the spoon in her shake. “You never wanna hang out anymore. I have to hunt you down and get you to warm up to me. If you don’t wanna be my friend, just tell me. You should know I can’t take a hint.”

The boy seated across from her stewed in silence for a good moment, gears churning somewhere in that machine of a brain. Piper was nothing if not patient. Leo asked her, “Have you heard of the suspension bridge effect?” He continued when she didn’t respond. “It’s what it sounds like. Say you’re scared shitless on a wonky bridge. There’s another person at the end and you think you might be in love with them or something ‘cause your hearts breaking outta your chest, though it’s for the wrong reason.”

“I am not in love with you,” Piper said slowly. “Just thought you should know.”

His laugh came out stuttered, sort of brittle. “God, I know. It’s supposed to mean that... you’re a cool girl, Piper. I know I’m magnificent and amazing, but not _that_ amazing. The school doesn’t exactly have a wide pool of non-threatening, clean record kids to choose from, but let me tell you now I’m the bottom of that barrel. You could do better, is what I’m saying.”

It took a lot of self-control to prevent her from exclaiming, “What! Shut up! Are you kidding!” A lot of self-control she didn’t have.

“What!” Piper cried. “Shut up! Are you kidding! You actually think I hung out by a dumpster for thirty minutes because I had no choice? Because my only other options were King Dylan and Queen Isabel of the Stupidass Court?”

“No?”

“No!” She dialed herself down by a few decibels when she saw a few customers in other booths look their way. “No, Leo. I come to you because I want to. You know how I asked if you liked me just now? I hoped you’d say yes, ‘cause it turns out I like _you_. You’re fun. You know how to piss off Coach. I want you on my team. Not anyone else. Capiche?”

“Capiche,” he said, rather dryly, but she could see that he was pleased. He took her shake and tipped it to sip, ignoring his own untouched one, like he was testing her sincerity. “Got it. Thanks.”

Piper threw a fry at him. Leo dodged. The rest of the evening devolved into a genuine food battle. Piper had completed her moat of ketchup just in time for Leo to repurpose the old circuitboard into a miniature catapult. None of them were well-versed in strategy, so there was no winner, and after they were kicked out of McDonald’s for public disruption, they ambled back to the school where they put Leo’s new invention to good use.

“Hey, Pipes,” Leo began, carefully loading up the catapult with eggs they’ve been using as ammo since they propped open his dorm room window.

“Yeah?”

“I do like you.”

“Well,” Piper said, over Dylan’s shocked yelling from below, “ain’t that a relief.”


End file.
